>> Mark Zuckerberg was testifying before the House Financial Services Committee today,
and there were a number of wonderful moments.
Katie Porter asked him some really tough questions about the Lobbyists that are employed at Facebook.
You have a discussion about Libra which is the currency that Facebook was attempting
to create.
But more importantly, the discussion also centered on political ads, the policy toward
political ads at Facebook.
Earlier, Mark Zuckerberg noted that he would not censor ads even if they were completely
lying.
And so in this question and answer period with Representative Ocasio-Cortez, Zuckerberg
was seen flailing and really struggling to answer her questions.
So lets take a look at the first video where he gets called out on his willingness to have
the Daily Caller or right wing propaganda site do fact checking for stories on Facebook.
>> Can you explain why you've named the Daily Caller a publication white, a well documented
with ties to white supremacist as an official fact checker for Facebook?
>> Congresswoman, sure, we actually don't appoint the independent fact checkers, they
go through an independent organization called the Independent Fact-Checking Network that
has a rigorous standard for who they allow to serve as a fact checker.
>> So you would say that white supremacist tied publications meet a rigorous standard
for fact checking?
Thank you.
>> Congresswoman, I would say that we're not the one assessing that standard, the International
Fact-Checking Network is the one who's setting that standard.
>> So I wanna say one thing about this, this is a very common answer that you get from
corporations who have been caught doing bad things.
So one example would be, there was a story about these sweatshops in various countries
that were employing children, they were abusive toward the children who were sewing garments.
And one of the US clothing brands here we were asked about it, and they were like, well,
we have a third party that does the contracts with these factories in the country, and we
had no idea.
It's their way of putting the ownness on the third party, no, but, you're the company,
right?
You're the corporation, Mark Zuckerberg, you're the CEO, so you don't get to place the blame
on some third party that you claim is independent.
>> If these types of excuses don't work for children, I mean I remember, i know kids don't
use these things this day, calculators.
Back in the day when I was in middle school and high school, qe used calculators in certain
things.
If your calculator was defective and you get wrong answers on your test, you can't go,
well, Mr. Johnson, my calculator is busted so therefore, it's its fault, I should get
an A on this test.
No, you failed because you have a faulty calculator.
If you have a faulty International Fact-Checking Network that you didn't look into to make
sure it was working correctly, everything that you do based off of that faulty fact
checking network is now on you, because you didn't flesh it out.
You are a multi-billionaire, and you can't get enough together to figure out how to get
a fact checking network to do things correctly?
Either that or you don't care, it's one of those two.
If somebody is fact checking how much money is coming in Bangkok, I damn guarantee you
have that figured out.
>> Can I also note that while he is, I mean willing to do fact checking on new stories
or post that have to do with news.
And obviously, he's doing a poor job in the policies surrounding that.
He is unwilling to do any type of fact checking when it comes to political ads Gee, I wonder
why, like, why, why is that, right?
Could it be that the political ads bring in money for Facebook, so he's willing to let
anything fly?
I mean, I'm speculating here but I think it's an educated guess.
>> So he actually answered that question and he pointed to the fact that the overall amount
that he brings in for political ads, I mean, I think I have the quote, yeah.
>> I have the quote, yeah, let me go ahead and read the quote to you.
Look, from a business perspective, and he's answering Maxine Waters and her question on
this.
The very small percent of our business that is made up of political ads does not come
anywhere close to justifying the controversy that this incurs for our company, so this
really is not about money, okay?
That's fair, no one cares about the financial sustainability of your company, the questions
being asked, because these political ads are destructive to our democracy.
It's not about you, homeboy, it's about this country and the damage that it's doing through
the lies that you are allowing various bad actors to spew on your platform, that's what
this is about.
>> And the way he says it too is like listen, we are incurring such an inconvenience by
dealing with this, just like dismissing it.
We are really doing you a service by elevating the political discourse in America to a point
where we allow, and his strategy is, we allow the people who are lying to lie, so that you
can find out that they're lying and judge them for having lied.
Mark, that's not how anything works, there is a kernel of a lie said, and the news that
your system provides to people only provides the version of the news that they already
like.
And they look at these ads, and they look at these clips that are lies, and they see
they're reinforced by their insulated news bubble, so they never find out that it's a
lie.
>> Exactly.
>> Your system built that.
>> Yes.
>> He's not too dumb, and I get that, that's another part of it too.
So again, that one quote you read about how he said, it isn't about the money because
the political ads that come through, it's such an insignificant amount of money, who
cares?
That's worse, bro.
>> Selling our data is a much bigger part of their business strategy.
>> Which part is?
>> Selling our data.
>> Selling the data, okay.
>> Yeah.
>> So if money isn't whats driving you, then it's just you're okay with subverting the
political system by allowing political smears to happen.
That's worst, at least at least if you're getting money, you're lining your pockets,
in this case, you're just trying to destroy things, that's worst.
>> So, God, there's so much video on this, I wanna go to the next video featuring AOC,
and she calls out Mark Zuckerberg ties to questionable individuals.
>> One more question, in your ongoing dinner parties with far right figure some of who
advanced the conspiracy theory that white supremacy is a hoax, did you discuss so called
social media bias against conservatives and do you believe there is a bias?
>> Congresswoman, I'm sorry, I don't remember everything that was in that question.
>> That's all right, I'll move on, can you- >> Sorry, Congresswoman, first of all, if
you're having a conversation with someone is a small tick to me.
Whenever you have a conversation with someone, if I'm discussing back and forth with you,
Brittany I'd like to address that situation, and I go, well, I hear ya Brad but hold on.
So JR, hey, it's like can you stop saying my name every time you address me with a sentence,
why is that?
I know it's a respect thing you say Congressman, Congresswoman, but chill, I love that.
>> It's almost like the machine has been programmed to begin with Congresswoman, like that's what
it is.
>> I'm not used to these difficult questions.
>> But that's what it is, it's like, cuz there's another moment when that happened where we
covered recently with Pompeo, Pompeo talking to Stephanopoulos when he got most frustrated
he would say, George.
And that's when you knew he was trying to tear George's status in that conversation
down, but with Zuckerberg its a tick and he wants to be respectful because he wants to
be perceived as respectful.
And he doesn't wanna start anything in anyway that might make her unduly upset, and lose
whatever perceived moral high ground he might have.
But with this specifically, AOC does an amazing job to just call it something that's also
in the first question, which is, you have all these systems setup, and I know for Zuckerberg,
what he wants to do is he's like Facebook is used by everybody.
Facebook, one of its key elements is that it increases the amount of communication overall
that we have.
And so he wants to then say, I need to include conservatives in this conversation, but what
he misses is that conservatives don't play by any rules.
They're not grounded in reality, specifically these ones he's going to dinner with, and
similar to the way in which Ergogan called Trump.
And Trump thought he could go toe to toe with Erdogan in a conversation, the same way he
thinks he can go toe to toe with dictators who killed people.
Zuckerberg goes in and to give him the benefit of all doubts, earnestly, saying I'm gonna
exchange information, and there's no way there can be a negative effect of exchanging information,
it makes everybody smarter.
They're gonna tell me what they think and know, and i'll tell them what I think and
no, but they go in.
And the difference between conservative and liberal media outlets as they are characterized
in a larger discussion of politics in America is that empirically, conservative ones lie
more.
That's been proven over and over again, and they don't care, they go into that conversation
that dinner with Zuckerberg, knowing that they're gonna warp his perception of reality,
you know why, cuz that is their skill.
>> Yeah.
>> They warp his perception of reality, take advantage of Facebook's creator how?
Cuz they have practiced by taking advantage of Facebook period, for years and years, and
they went to the architect from the matrix on it, and they played it
>> Yeah, that's such a good way of putting it.
>> It's so frustrating.
>> And I think that, this isn't to say conservative perspectives shouldn't be represented on Facebook,
but there should be a clear distinction between principled individuals who are honest actors,
and those who are misusing Facebook for nefarious purposes.
And that's really what the heart of this conversation is about.
Now, I wanna go to the final video featuring AOC, this is a little lengthy but it's a good
one, and she poses some hypotheticals that Mark Zuckerberg really struggles to answer.
>> Could I run ads targeting Republicans and primary saying that they voted for the Green
New Deal?
>> Sorry, can you repeat that?
>> Would I be able to run advertisements on Facebook targeting Republicans in primaries
saying that they voted for the Green New Deal?
I mean, if you're not fact checking political advertisements, I'm just trying to understand
the bounds here, what's fair game?
>> Congresswoman, I don't know the answer to that off the top of my head, I think-`
>> So you don't know if I'll be able to do that?
>> I think, probably.
>> Do you see a potential problem here with a complete lack of fact checking on political
advertisements?
>> Well, Congresswoman, I think lying is bad, and I think if you were to run an ad that
had a lie, that would be bad.
That's different from it being, in our position, the right thing to do to prevent your constituents
or people in an election from seeing that you had lied-
>> So you won't take down lies or you will take down lies?
I think it's just a pretty simple yes or no.
>> Congresswoman, in- >> I'm not talking about I'm talking about
actual >> Yes, in those cases, in the democracy,
I believe that people should be able to see for themselves what politicians that they
may or may not vote for- >> So you won't take them down?
>> Judge their character for themselves.
>> You may flag that as wrong but you won't take it down?
>> Congresswoman, it depends on the context that it shows up, organic post, ads,
>> One question- >> Can we go back to my bank analogy since
he's a rich guy, if you go to the Chase Bank and you've got several million in one particular
account.
And then you notice that there's some security issues with the bank, and then there's also
no insurance behind your money.
And you go, hey, I'd like to speak with the manager, is my money protected here?
And they go, well, we think robbery is bad.
>> Yeah.
>> But we are not really doing anything to stop it, we're just gonna let them steal it
and when you come back, where's all my money, you go-
>> I think it's bad.
>> Yeah.
>> But it's out of my purview I'm only the owner of the damn bank, I can't do anything
about trying to stop it, you take your money out
>> And just to put this in the perspective of what this hearing was about, It was about
Facebook trying to start something completely different, that is also wildly terrifying
which is Facebook's starting its own currency.
And I just wanna underscore the size, scope, and monopolistic nature of Facebook.
>> Yeah.
>> It is so huge, and it's also WhatsApp, and it's also Instagram, it is all of these
things, and it doesn't really have to compete, we heard that in the original one.
And he kinda gets away with it because a lot of the people asking the questions, that were
Republicans who didn't, and just older Democrats too, who didn't really understand what he
was talking about and what Facebook is.
That's why it's great to have AOC show up and just say, so let's say, I wanted to lie
about someone I'm running against in the election, would that work?
And it all comes down to what Facebook and Facebook specifically is supposed to do, which
is understand the world as it is, and make their product reflect that.
>> Exactly.
>> And they can't, because he does not understand the world as it is.
And he thinks he does at every given moment.
>> Yeah, that's such a good way of putting it, really.
I mean, he's so disconnected from reality, and this is why proposals to break up tech
companies like Facebook makes sense to me.
Because there are various regulations that apply to the different business ventures that
this one company is engaged in, you have Facebook as a news publisher, there are regulations
that pertain to that.
You have Facebook as an ad agency, there are regulations that pertain to that.
You have this giant company that's essentially multiple businesses put into one, and you
can't really regulate it properly in order to protect the best interests of the American
people when you can't define the company.
So that's why I think it makes sense to push forward with breaking up these ten companies
in a way that makes sense.
And of course, he hates that which is why he's willing to comply with these hearings
and he's willing to show up.
Usually, Republicans in the end will smear him anyway even though he gives them everything
that they want.
And it's frustrating because just like our mainstream media he caves into their demands,
only to experience them smearing him after the fact anyway